The subject of this tale, as told by the mayor of a tiny town in eastern Tennessee, was a moonshiner, which has little bearing on the story itself.

I had a taxidermy job. And there was this fella from over the other side of Elizabethton, toward Bristol, had a zoo. And he came down there one day and he had this dead ostrich and these dead iguanas — lizards. He wanted me to mount them for him. Well, I took them in and I put the lizards in the freezer and I skinned out the ostrich. And he didn’t come back and give me a deposit or anything, so I didn’t do anything with them.